


this is a story about wolves

by underscored



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Gen, Golden Age (Narnia), Intrigue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 05:41:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16056692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/underscored/pseuds/underscored
Summary: But what they didn’t know then (and how could they?) was that war left scars, and Aslan hadn’t just made them Kings and Queens, he’d left them a land broken by two wars and a hundred years of occupation in between.To some, they were saviors, Aslan’s chosen.To others, they were just tyrants waiting to happen.All stories are about wolves. This is one of them.





	this is a story about wolves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ViaLethe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViaLethe/gifts).



> I think this is maybe not quite what you were expecting, but I hope you like it anyhow. I love writing Susan, and I can't thank you enough for the chance to play in this sandbox. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I did writing.

_All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel._

_All of them?_

_Sure, he says. Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist._ –Margaret Atwood

* * *

The whole mess starts out as they almost always do: abruptly, unexpectedly, and horrifyingly quickly.

Lucy’s away up north, dealing with a small outbreak of some respiratory ailment brought on by an unusually cold, wet onset of autumn, and though Edmund had offered to go with her, it had been a half-hearted attempt at best. She’d refused, laughing something about needing some time before being locked in a castle with them all winter and vanished into the wilds with her usual small contingent. 

It rains for most of the morning, but the clouds clear in the afternoon, dreary day giving way to unseasonably bright skies. Peter drags a distracted Edmund out of a trade meeting; Susan notices them sneaking out through the kitchens while she’s stalking the baker, trying to coax a loaf of rye out of him before he gets started on the usual orders.

Together they slip away, Susan pushing them towards the stables, bribing the young Faun working the horses with a bright smile and a stolen pastry, pausing only long enough to grab her bow and a spare. She would feel guilty about leaving their guards behind, but really, the butts aren’t that far, and she’ll be armed. Edmund always is, and surely Peter’s got at least one knife tucked in his boot. Besides, they’re together, on their own grounds. There’s only so much that can go wrong.

* * *

Edmund’s laughing, sprawled on the grass, all dignity long since forgotten. The tense, contemplative line that’s clouded his brow all morning has finally gone, and for once he actually looks as young as he is.

Susan can’t spend too much time watching him, however: she’s in the middle of shaming Peter so thoroughly he’ll never want to pick up a projectile weapon again. Peter is a man of many skills, and he’s nearly unparalleled in the conduct of war (much to Tashbaan’s eternal dismay), but her brother can’t shoot a damn arrow to save his life. He knows how to deploy a contingent of archers, certainly, and he’s unbeatable with a blade, but _Lion_ , he’s a horrid shot.

“Peter,” she laughs, trying to keep her voice fairly level in contrast to Edmund’s breathless squawking behind her, “every single one of my novices would have hit at least one of those shots.”

“Can your novices do hand-to-hand with Centaurs?” he mutters, pushing his air out of his eyes and glaring balefully at the bow in his hand. “Can they sit through seven rounds of border negotiations with the Tisroc’s younger son? Because I don’t think-“

“You’re very talented, I’m sure, Peter,” Edmund chokes out, finally managing to lever himself up off the ground and upright. “Here, let me.”

There’s a complicated exchange of raised brows and quirked lips between her brothers before Peter slaps the bow down into Edmund’s hand and her younger brother steps up next to her, grinning over his shoulder. He’s not a bad shot, nothing on her, though he can probably throw a knife more accurately than she can. Still, anything after Peter is more challenging.

“Let’s see what you can do, then.” She flashes him a sharp grin, running her fingers through the fletching of her loosely nocked arrow. Before he can reply, she’s raised the bow, feeling the lovely, _fluid tense calm_ that rushes through her every time she moves into position. The draw is like breathing, easier than she could ever explain. The arrow flies true, as she knew it would. 

When it buries itself in the target, Peter screams.

* * *

Everything stops.

Her arrow is lodged in the target, right where she sent it.

Peter is on the ground, an arrow in his chest, scrabbling to breathe over the pain.

There’s a sharp, abbreviated howl from the tree line and a figure stumbling from the shadows.

And Susan can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t plan, so she does the only thing she has left and draws, nocks, aims, fires.

Her arrow strikes true again, and now there’s a body with another one of her arrows deep in its back, facedown beyond the targets.

There’s a flash of grey and she’s too slow to fire on it, dragging air into her chest as she feels her heart begin to beat again.

And Edmund.

Edmund is _gone_.

* * *

Edmund is waiting for her where the dim shade of fading night melts into the dark shadows of the western gatehouse. Huddled down in a cloak- one of hers, she notes without much surprise- to ward off the chill, a Wolf curled near his feet, he looks like a wandering hermit or one of the statues in Archenland’s ancient temples.

His stillness whips the anger up in her and suddenly she’s furious, reaching out before she draws even with him, jerking him closer to the wall with a grip she knows has to be hurting him. Her own fingers ache from the stranglehold she has on his wrist, but he doesn’t utter so much as a sound in protest and she can’t bring herself to care if she leaves bruises. She is so angry, furious, that he would do something like this. To her. To himself. To all of them. 

“What the hell are you playing at?”

“Susan-“

“ _No_ ,” she hisses, driving him back into the wall, hands now against his chest. The Wolf rumbles quietly but withdraws into shadows as well, yellow eyes flashing. Susan trembles, though she can’t honestly say if it’s with fury or fear and she hates that uncertainty. She’s spent years trying to drive it out, and it’s only ever her family who can make it rise in her chest these days, choking her reason and calm. “You left me with our injured brother and the body of an assassin and you _vanished_.”

Even with her eyes adjusting to the dimness before dawn, she can only make out of flashes of her brother, but even what little is clear tells her that his face is paler than she’s seen in years, his eyes flatter. “I swear,” he whispers, and his voice is urgent but low, desperate to be believed but not anticipating it. He doesn’t so much as twitch away from where she still holds him against the chilled stone. “I swear this wasn’t-“

“I know that.” And she does, of course she does. The thought occurred to her; most thoughts do, in time, but she’s not stupid enough to consider that such a botched attempt would be the product of Edmund’s planning. If Edmund wanted Peter dead, he’d have walked up to him and stabbed him in the heart.

And Peter would have let him.

“You idiot, I know it wasn’t you. But you still left me. What were you thinking?”

“Lion,” he whispers, tension leaving his body in degrees out as the silence stretches out between them, and then he slumps down against the wall, both hands over his face. She steps back herself, her own anger draining away as she watches her brother- younger, always younger, and she forgets sometimes- come apart quietly in the shadows of their home.

“Idiot,” she murmurs, still trying to get her bearings in all of this. There’s something deeper here, something she can vaguely sense but can’t quite get the shape of. She knows Edmund has been tracking something down, his people all over the country in all manner of messes of late. They’ve always been good about information-sharing, but he’s played this close to his chest, and that hurts, too. “You have to tell me things.”

He chuffs a laugh, still slumped against the wall, and pinches his brow the way he does in tactical debriefs and overlong trade negotiations. “Tell her, Anick.”

_Anick_. That’s the name. Susan would berate herself for forgetting, but it’s been a hard day, and the Wolf has been gone from Cair Paravel for months. On assignment, apparently.

“Majesty.” Susan can just sketch out the Wolf’s shape as she bobs a respectful nod. “As King Edmund knows, I have been with Northern Gale. They’ve grown bold, of late, bold enough to send an assassin. I reported in to the King this morning.”

Susan freezes momentarily, stunned. Northern Gale has taunted them for years, striking border outposts and releasing whispers into garrisons and towns across the country. They’re more ghosts than anything else; no one has ever met a member, or seen their encampment, or heard a rumor of who leads them. Three years after the Witch died and the Pevensies took their thrones they just appeared, spreading whispers of foreign lords come to subjugate Narnia and its people. 

They shouldn’t have taken hold, the rumors, not with Aslan’s blessing and the death of the Witch and the fact that the Pevensies were, on the whole, fairly beloved. But what they didn’t know then ( _and how could they?_ ) was that war left scars, and Aslan hadn’t just made them Kings and Queens, he’d left them a land broken by two wars and a hundred years of occupation in between. 

To some, they were saviors, Aslan’s chosen.

To others, they were just tyrants waiting to happen.

Northern Gale is insidious and highly organized and impossible to root out because they are believers. To have one of Edmund’s people successfully buried among them…

“The assassin.” It makes sense, now: the rustle in the trees, the arrow, shot by an archer whose arm would have been ever so slightly jostled. And the second figure… “That was you with him, Anick.”

“I gave the order to let it happen.” Edmund pushes up and away from the wall, pulling her attention from their spy. “Anick’s been on mission on Northern Gale for two years. She joined them last winter and has been reporting since. And then she came to me this morning, reported that she’d told them she could get someone in…” He pauses, running a hand over his face. “I didn’t want to ruin her cover, so we found a way to… leverage the sitation.”

“You let the assassination attempt happen, knowing Anick would be there to prevent it from succeeding, and then…” she trails off, watching his face thoughtfully. He’s wearing that look he gets when he knows he’s gone too far, but is willing to go farther, when has a thousand arguments prepared to throw at you to convince you of the rightness of his ideas. He’s dangerous like this, even for her; he glows with the kind of belief that Lucy always radiates, and Susan has always been weak before that sort of conviction.

But this… she can see the shape of it now, can follow Edmund’s plan to its inevitable conclusion. “No. This is foolish.”

“Why?” His hands are deathly cold around her own. “We’ve been tracking them for years with no success. We know they’re here, Susan: they have to have people inside the palace, to have dared this. People close to our family. Next time it won’t be one of our spies letting them in. Next time they’ll actually kill one of us.”

“Then send Anick back. It can’t be you.”

With a shake of his head, he pulls her closer, tilting his head to catch her eyes. Edmund is only seventeen, but in the slowing graying light he looks ancient. “Anick doesn’t matter to them. They’ll never let her closer than the outermost circle. But me…” Their seven years on the throne feel like a hundred, suddenly. “It can’t be anyone but me, Susan.” He sighs, looking infinitely weary. “We’ve been chasing this for years. I want… I want to end it.”

For all the rumors that Northern Gale spreads- that Peter is a monster wearing a crown given to him by a false god, that Susan is a whore searching for a new throne, that Lucy is a vain fool tripping through her queenship at the expense of her people- none is more damaging than this: that Edmund is Jadis’ heir, and that he is only biding his time. They’ve both heard it, and every time one of their whisperers reports it, Susan has to watch Edmund flinch. Of course he wants to end it. Still. “Find a better way.”

“Give me a year, and I swear, I can end this.”

“Peter won’t give you a year. When he wakes, he’ll overturn every stone on this continent to find you, and bring you home.” He’d drain the ocean and invade Calormen to bring any of them home, much less Edmund. For Edmund, whom he had lost before, Susan thinks he’d do anything. “He’ll never believe it.”

Edmund’s face is deathly serious. “Maybe not on his own. But he will believe you.”

Susan shivers.

“Susan, please. Half the kingdom already believes I’m one slight away from betraying you all again.” He says this so baldly, so plainly, like he’s considered this every day. He probably has, for years and years and years. Something clenches in her heart and twists, hard. “It doesn’t hurt me to let them keep thinking it.”

“That’s a damned lie.” There’s a reason her brother prays as often as he does, a reason he sits judgment on every case or murder or assault or treason they’ve ever had brought before the Throne. He does penance every day for the mistake he made as a child, a mistake he’ll never be allowed to forget. A mistake, which, if he gets his way now, he’ll re-enact in horrible parody as an adult. “Edmund, he’ll never believe it. And neither will Lucy. It’s a terrible risk.”

“That’s why I need you. I can’t do this if Peter comes haring off after me the moment he wakes up. He needs to believe it’s true. Otherwise…”

Otherwise they’ll never believe it’s true. Otherwise they’ll keep sending assassins, keep their mole in the castle, keep haunting Narnia.

Reaching out, she cradles his face in her hands, noting the knives beneath his stolen cloak, the leather satchel resting against the wall, the well-worn boots on his feet. She keeps the words she wants to say ( _what about the danger to you, little brother, what about your cost_ ). “You’ll come home. This is not penance.”

He leans into her hand for just a moment and then straightens, grabbing his pack in one smooth motion. Anick is already slipping through the gatehouse, swallowed up in the shadows. “I’ll come home when this is finished.”

And then she’s alone, very much alone, watching Edmund slip away into the predawn light. She waits, hoarding the moments of quiet as she gathers herself, and when the first hint of color tinges the sky she vanishes inside, sneaking back to her chambers to prepare her own betrayal.

* * *

“No.”

“Your Majesty, stop moving.” The surgeon hisses as Peter tries to surge up once more from his sickbed, pressing him down with brown arms strong as branches. Danae has been with them since the Witch’s War, stitching up their fighters on Beruna and every battlefield since. Her bedside manner leaves quite a lot to be desired, but there’s no one in the kingdom better with a needle. Peter’s not present enough to notice the acerbity, and Susan couldn’t care less about the Dryad’s brusqueness now. “Your sister the queen will arrive with the cordial in short order, but until then any undue movement will cause greater strain to your shoulder. Lie back.”

“Peter, listen to her.” She’s got one hand wrapped up in Peter’s left, staying away from his right arm and the massive wound put in his shoulder by the assassin’s barbed bolt. He’d collapsed from the pain and the laudanum as soon as they’d got him into the keep yesterday, and he’s been kept under since while Danae tended his wound. Now, though, he’s awake, eyes fever bright, sweating from the drugs and the confusion. “Please, Lucy will be here soon, but until then, you must stay down.”

“Where’s Edmund?” His glittering eyes track Danae’s hands, following the Dryad as she rethreads her needle and cautiously returns to his torn stiches. “Susan-“ and those glittering eyes are on her now, “is he hurt? I remember… I don’t- where is he?”

_He’s with the wolves_ , she thinks darkly, hands tightening on Peter’s, _he’s in the wind_. “He’s not here, Peter.”

“I should hope not,” Danae mutters, bending closer to Peter’s wound. “After what that trai-“

“Danae.” She puts as much steel in her voice as she can; she thinks of the Bight of Calormen on a windless day, or the northern night skies in the dead of winter, and wills her face to reflect that stillness. She’s deep, deep, deep; dark and calm. There is no uncertainty in her. She wills it to be so. “This is not what the High King needs now. He needs rest. Everything else can wait.”

“Yes, Majesty.” Her heavily lined face is pinched as she returns to her work, but she’s quiet, now, and that’s what Susan needs. She needs quiet to think, and she needs more time.

Time is never going to fix this.

“What- what does she mean, Su?” The laudanum is kicking in again; even as he tugs her closer, he’s fading out, grip that should never slip weakening on her hand, until she’s the one grasping him. “W’a’s she talking ‘bout.”

“Sleep, Peter. “ She pushes the hair back from his forehead, pressing a kiss to his sweaty brow. He looks very young like this, face relaxing slowly from the drugs, lines of tension smoothed out and erased in the wash of fall light through the open window behind her. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

* * *

“Tell me what’s going on.”

“Hello, Lucy.”

“Susan, tell me what’s going on.” Lucy’s right at her shoulder and Susan can’t look at her. Not yet. “I got back an hour ago and healed Peter, and all anyone can talk about is how this is Edmund, somehow. And he’s not here to explain and Peter’s no idea what’s happening- so just, just tell me.”

Susan wrenches her eyes away from the glittering sea and turns to face her sister. Lucy is bright like the sun, hair in a messy braid, still wearing travel-stained and rumpled clothes. There’s a knife strapped to her hip and what looks like a splotch of Peter’s blood drying on her sleeve, and she’s radiating determination and righteous indignation.

In the face of her, Susan thinks of calm water and dark nights, and says, “What are they saying happened.”

“What?” Lucy’s scowl is instantaneous; confusion and disbelief mingle in her voice. She steps closer to Susan, staring up at her in fierce anger that is not yet directed as her sister.

It will be soon, though. “It is what it is, Lucy.”

“ _No_ ,” she spits, emphatic, as though she can change what Susan is telling her through sheer force of will. It has worked before, but Susan has promises to keep. “Don’t say that. Not to me.”

“I don’t know what you want me to tell you, Lucy. He’s gone.” Gone off north to play the traitor everyone thinks he is. It hurts how easily word had spread through Narnia, but it doesn’t surprise her. The court’s whispers and ambassadors’ sly glances have only galvanized the rumor mill; she doubts there’s a person alive within two hundred miles who doesn’t know that Edmund King of Narnia is a traitor. “What else can I say?”

Lucy’s mouth trembles and works soundlessly for a moment before she finally masters herself and snarls, “I can’t believe you.”

And then she’s gone, and Susan is alone again, with the sea behind her and Cair Paravel before her and a whole country to lie to. She breathes, leaning heavily on the marble railing as she turns back to the water again. Lucy will come ‘round; she always does. Even as a child her anger burned hot and fast: outrage sprang quickly but could never last. She’s the same now. She’ll come back, kind and warm and bright as ever, and Susan will lie. To her, and to Peter, and to every single one of her people, until Edmund comes home.

A brisk breeze rises off the sea, lifting her hair and skirts, whipping across her face. She may lie every day, to every one of her people, but behind those lies and falsehoods ( _she thinks, she hopes_ ) there is only devotion. To her brother, her family, her throne. They don’t all have to be good people; Peter and Lucy can take care of that. Edmund, too, though he’ll never admit it and no one else will ever be brave enough to say it. Susan’s come to terms with what she is and is not, over the years, and she may not be good or kind or particularly _Gentle_ , but she is faithful.

She’ll live with the lies, if it means she can keep her promises and protect what’s hers.

* * *

The rumor mills churns wildly, and during the first week every whisper in every corridor in Cair Paravel is about _Edmund, Edmund, the traitor, the Witch’s boy_.

Susan hates it. So. Damned. Much.

She refuses to speak his name, won’t discuss what happened with anyone, neither Lucy nor Peter nor any of her generals or spies or diplomats.

During the first few weeks, Peter chases her down on a daily basis, pleading, cajoling, even once, in a fit of insanity, ordering her to _tell me the truth, tell me what’s going on_. He receives the same flat answers she gave Lucy back at the beginning of this madness, and she withdraws a little more with each lie, a quiet desolation of calm and stillness between the world and her.

Eventually, he stops asking.

Eventually, they stop talking.

Yule comes and goes, and the less said about that, the better.

* * *

Midnight finds her in Edmund’s chambers again. Under her orders guards have stopped patrolling the corridor between his and Peter’s rooms after dark; there’s little point, she argues, as they already guard all the entrances to the royal wing. Edmund is clearly not lurking in a dim corner to murder his brother on his way to his study, so why waste a guard who could be put to better use on the guardhouse, or the western wall, or the seagate?

If it’s a logical suggestion- which it is, all of her suggestions since Edmund vanished have been logical- it also eases her passage to her missing brother’s room. It’s how she’s here now, standing on Edmund’s terrace wrapped in his oldest dressing gown, watching the stars move slowly overhead. She’s put on no lights, nor did she bring a candle; she knows these passages and rooms like her own and besides, no one can know she’s here, wrapped in a traitor’s robes, trying to hear his voice in her head.

About a month ago she’d stopped sleeping, really: she steals a few hours here and there, subsisting mostly on small naps stolen in the warmer parts of the afternoon and enduring a restless haze that takes her whenever she forces herself to lie down in her own chambers. She’s lost weight as well; between the sleeplessness and the stress food has lost its flavor, and her clothes hang loosely on her, though the winter chill has allowed her to mostly hide the changes under a multitude of layers.

She doesn’t dare believe this farce is hurting her more than any of the others (Lion only knows what’s happening to Edmund), but it is hurting her, changing her, molding her into something sharp and dark and alone.

A gust of wind whips up over the balustrade, and she wraps the dressing gown closer around herself, trying not to think of the last time she’d seen Edmund wearing it. He’d not pulled it out this autumn, before… before, so it must have been just before spring set in, last year, months and months ago. It doesn’t smell like him anymore, that distinctive mix of parchment and pine and steel; now it smells slightly of the cedar chips it had been wrapped up with, and the faint perfume Susan still applies, day in and day out, to keep delicate noses out of her business, no matter how well-intentioned those noses are. Her own Guard doesn’t know she’s here, though Moren knows she’s not in her chambers. The Coyote won’t say a word regardless of what he may or may not smell lingering on her skin and hair, but Lion forbid Peter’s Guard catch the scent and inform her older brother.

He’s not speaking to her now, and that’s a horrible, gut-wrenching experience she could gladly do without, but at least when he’s avoiding her she doesn’t have to lie to him. Lion help her if he gets even a hint that there’s something deeper beneath this, because he’ll never let it go. Susan can endure a lot- she thinks she’s proven that fairly well by this point- but even she is only human, and while she may not care much for the general opinion of her behaviors, Peter matters. Peter being hurt matters. Peter being hurt _by her_ matters quite a lot. But Peter staying alive matters the most, and that’s what this is all for. It is, she reminds herself. That’s the endgame.

It’s nearly one hundred and twenty days of this hell (of course she’s counting, how could she not), with no word from Edmund, and that’s still the endgame.

She shivers once more, watches a star streak across the sky towards the east, and then slips back inside.

* * *

“Your Majesties, the Moors Post has reported that Northern Gale has attacked one of the settlements near the Western Mountains.” The sentry shifts uncomfortably before the thrones, her eyes flicking persistently to the empty throne at Peter’s left. “They came in the night, and the snow.”

Peter’s whole body stiffens. Any mention of Northern Gale now and he’s frozen. After a few moments of silence, Lucy speaks up. “How many dead, is there a count?”

The Centaur bobs a bow in Lucy’s direction as she answers. “A dozen, maybe, Majesty. We believe most escaped to the fort, but in the confusion some were lost, or killed.”

“Did you capture any?” Peter finally scrapes out, voice wrecked. Susan can see the tendons in his wrist clearly as he clenches his hands on the arms of his throne. He’s wound so tightly she’s afraid anything might make him snap. He won’t look at her, not even to gauge her reaction She keeps her own face carefully blank, mind churning beneath. If Edmund’s not dead, he might have been part of the raid. If he’s not dead, he might have attacked a Narnian settlement. If, if, if…

“We did not, your Majesty.”

She closes her eyes briefly, lets out a long, slow sigh. “Thank you…?”

“Hellath, your Majesty.”

“Thank you, Hellath.” She nods in dismissal, because Peter’s clearly not going to, and Lucy is already preoccupied with thoughts of how best to help.

They sit in silence, so unnatural for them, the throne room clearing after the sentry leaves, until it’s just her and her siblings. Susan resists the urge to shift on her throne.

It’s Peter who breaks first.

“I’m taking a small contingent up the coast to check the sea forts.” His voice is doing a good impression of flatness, but he’s less of a liar than she is and the tension is there beneath his steady tone.

“Take an extra guard with you.” She’s kept Peter safe this long at the cost of every ounce of sanity she has; she’s not going to let him get himself killed out of sheer bloody stubbornness, no matter how hard he may try.

She should have known that pressing him after the news of Northern Gale would be too much, but she’s distracted herself, and so she’s almost startled when he snaps. Suddenly he’s risen from his throne, turning on her and snarling, “You do not tell what I can and cannot do, Susan. I’ve had enough of it.”

For a moment, she’s stock still, frozen against her throne, every admonition she’s leveled at herself in the dead of night rearing its ugly head in agreement with Peter’s anger. There’s a moment where she considers agreeing, considering breaking.

But she has promises to keep.

In that moment, staring up at the brother she loves desperately enough to lie to, to destroy herself for, she is Susan and she is not; she is the sister who protects her family, and the Queen whose skin can barely contain the dark, dangerous thing shifting beneath it. She has lied, and will lie, and hates what she can see it doing to her family, but she is certain in this knowledge: this is what she must do. This throne is hers, this country hers, this family, hers. She will do what she must to protect it, and damn the consequences.

She lets this desperation, this anger, barely tamped down these days, rise up, and flare to fury. How _dare_ he, how dare he accuse her? He knows, surely he must know, everything she does, she does for him. So she raises her chin, grips the arms of her throne tight, and pours every ounce of rage, every dangerous edge she’s carefully cultivated over the last few months into her tone when she pronounces, cold and flat as the winter sea, “Someone has to give orders, Peter. We can’t all sit here, paralyzed with indecision. Someone has to act.”

“You don’t-“

“I don’t _what_ , Peter.” Her tone is still icy as the Witch’s Winter, sharp enough to cut herself and everyone around her. “By all means, tell me.”

He stands above her, chest heaving, for a long, horrible moment, and then he turns on his heel and stomps away. Susan watches him go, breath coming shallowly as he vanishes through one of the side doors and off, no doubt, to do exactly what he’d said he would.

“Susan…” Lucy’s voice is quiet, troubled. “I-“

“I can’t, Lucy, I can’t have this argument with you now.”

“No, Susan, it’s just… one of us needs to go to the settlement, give them aid. I would, but…” Susan turns to regard her, unused to reticence like this from her younger sister. Lucy’s face is deeply troubled, but she locks eyes with Susan for the first time in months as she says, quietly, “I don’t think I should leave you and Peter here alone.”

It’s a heavy fear to voice, but the damning thing is that Lucy is probably right. Susan is exhausted almost beyond her ability to bear, and Peter can’t understand why she won’t talk about what happened that day, why she won’t absolve their brother. There’s too much anger and pain between them now. Another confrontation like this will break them, and Northern Gale won’t have to send another assassin.

“You’re right,” she says slowly, then sighs. “I’ll go. Peter and I could use some distance.” It’s not as if she’s more useful here. Lucy nods slowly, eyes softening as she watches Susan.

“I know it’s been hard, Su, but-“

“When I get back.” With that, she rises and follows Peter’s retreat, trying to ignore the look of pained sympathy Lucy gives her on her way out. Once in the corridor, Moren falls in at her side, pretending he’d not heard every shouted word. As always, she appreciates his discretion.

“Get a cohort ready to travel to the Western Mountains,” she orders, not having to look to know that Moren is nodding at her words. “And send an extra contingent with the High King.”

* * *

When she finally makes it to her chambers that night, logistics finalized and route planned to set out tomorrow, it is to find a hawk perched on the balustrade on her balcony.

She throws the door open, letting in a rush of frigid winter air and the smell of the sea. The hawk holds obediently still for her as she removes the small bundle from its leg; not a Talking Animal, but very well-trained. As soon as she gets the tie loose, the bird steps away from her and launches into the night, leaving her alone again.

Inside, in the light of several oil-lamps and a roaring fire, she unwraps the cloth bundle with trembling fingers. When she finally frees the cord and the scrap of oilcloth rolls open, it reveals a small fir branch and a hank of coarse grey fur wrapped in a piece of knotted silk thread.

_Edmund_.

She’d taught him this when they were children, before Narnia, before any of this. A day when he was ill, or she was, confined to bed and someone reading a tale about daring knights and midnight rescues and messages passed in knotted ropes. It’s something they’ve kept between them all these years; their whisperers know many codes, but not this one.

In her hands, the thread says, _It’s time. Come to me_.

She doesn’t have to finish the message to know where he is.

* * *

The early morning light is grey, filtered through heavy clouds threatening another snowfall, and Susan’s hands are already cold as she pauses under the portico, even ensconced in lined gloves as they are. She can see Hellath, head ducked to confer with Moren and Ashai, the Doe that Susan transferred over from Edmund’s bewildered guard months ago, right after all this began. She’s been loyal, so terrifyingly loyal that Susan hates to think about it, and if there’s a part of her that’s noted that none of Edmund’s regular contingent will speak so much as a word against him she doesn’t let it show, but she remembers. They’ll all be rewarded when this farce is over.

“Susan.”

It’s a testament to her level of distraction that she doesn’t hear Lucy come up behind her; she’s been jumping at shadows lately, and the arrival of Edmund’s summons last night has only heightened her caution. Even with all this, her little sister is still there, just at her shoulder, eyes filled with a concern that Susan has grown all too familiar with these last months.

She swallows around the rocks in her throat and grates out, “Lucy,” more thankful than she can say when it sounds passably normal. She is too tired for this, teetering on the edge after her fight with Peter, her anxiety over the journey, her damned exhaustion with this whole mess. “Come to see me off? I’m sure Hellath won’t allow any harm to come to-“

“I don’t know what you’re doing, or why, exactly, but I do trust you.” Lucy’s face is as solemn as her words, and her hands, when they catch Susan’s gloved ones, are steady. “I don’t know why you feel you must keep these secrets, but if you do, then I trust you.”

She has no idea what to do with _that,_ and so she does nothing, staring at a fixed point over Lucy’s shoulder.

“It’s hard,” Lucy continues, ignoring Susan’s silence for the avoidance it is, “and especially on Peter. He still wants to protect us all, and he hates when he can’t. But he trusts you, too, in his own way.”

Susan does meet her eyes then, tired and frustrated and honestly angry. She sees nothing in those eyes but faith, and concern, and that _hurts_. “He doesn’t speak to me like he does to you, Lucy.”

They both know she’s not talking about Peter.

Lucy squeezes her hands; Susan thinks of a stone table in the Winter and the way Lucy accepted his return, the way Susan never could. She thinks maybe she’s always been colder, always kept that stone table and wolves in the darkness and the knowledge that good doesn’t always win deeper than she was meant to do. 

“Maybe he does, you just don’t recognize it yet.”

Maybe he just has nothing to say to her.

“Lucy, I need to go. I can’t keep them waiting like this.”

“Susan.” Her sister’s voice is urgent, compelling. Susan squeezes her hands, reassuring her in the only way that’s not a lie. “We know you. You’re doing this for us, somehow, and Peter will see that. Aslan knows. Think about what I said.”

Susan squeezes her hands once more and pulls away, thinking about snow on stone and wolves.

* * *

It’s been raining steadily for hours now: no thunder or flashes of lighting, and the weather is just warm enough to keep the rain from becoming snow. It’s a steady, monotonous, freezing rain that has been hard on everyone, Susan included, but there’s a cloth-wrapped bundle of branches and fur and silken threads in her saddlebag and a lodestone somewhere her heart should be tugging her forward. After everything she’s done, the lies she’s told these last six months, she won’t let a little rain stop her.

Feeling the tension in her hands, Asen shifts beneath her, mouthing softly at the bit. She runs a hand through his soaked mane to calm him. Aside from that, they could be carved from stone, horse and rider both.

This is the third day she’s waited, oil cloak drawn close about her, hood over her head, heart quietly, angrily tripping in her chest. It’s the third day she’s watched the pines, scraggly here in the high western mountains, gripping desperately in rocky soil, and willing the dark something that lives under her skin to stop shifting restlessly.

She doesn’t know what she’ll do, exactly, if Edmund has been hurt, but she suspects that neither Lucy nor Peter nor Edmund himself would approve.

She’s far past caring.

Asen nickers softly and Susan focus intently on a small patch of darkness between the trees that reveals a softer gray than the surrounding gloom. Her heart twists again and then proceeds to try and crawl out of her throat as the gloom resolves into Edmund, still wrapped in her damned stolen cloak, one she knows from long experience has not been treated to repel rain.

She can’t breathe.

They both wait, frozen in the rain and the chill mist. The trees are close, and Edmund has just barely left their cover, hovering as though he can’t quite decide whether to come forward or not, can’t quite decide whether to stay or flee. She finds his eyes, and they’re uncertain.

She exhales, suddenly, and sound comes rushing back through her, along with higher motor functions. Suddenly she’s scrambling, tripping off Asen, graceless in her desperation to get to him. He’s here, and alive, and finally real, and it’s too much to believe he’s not a ghost without touching him.

Clumsy in the rain and the chill and the shock, she stumbles as she dismounts, and suddenly he’s there, a strong arm at her back, radiating warmth even in the dismal weather. “Lion, Susan,” he murmurs, firm hands on her upper arms while she gets her footing, “Careful.”

There’s something off with his voice; it’s lower, softer than she remembers, the cadence off, like a man who hasn’t spoken in a while. There’s another pang in her chest at that realization and she whirls, wrenching his hands off her arms with the motion and turning to face him, not even trying to calm the roaring anger beneath her skin.

He looks… he looks about as bad as she’d expected, though not as bad as she’d feared on the worst nights she’s had. He’s drawn and pale and thinner than she remembers, but he’s alive. She doesn’t ask before reaching up and knocking the hood back- as soon as she does, it becomes clear it wasn’t only the rain he was keeping out.

“Damn it, Edmund.” He closes his eyes in admission, though he holds still as she puts one hand lightly on his cheek, tilting his head this way and that to get a better look at the gash across his face. It’s an ugly pink, still stark against his skin where it stretches from his ear and up over his cheekbone to the bridge of his nose, but it’s healed more or less cleanly, no puckering or discoloration. She brings her thumb up to run across it, watchful for any sign of a flinch or an indication that it’s tender, but he’s still as stone, breath slow and even. “You nearly lost that eye.”

“I thought I had,” he admits, still motionless beneath her hand, eyes closed, though she catches the tail end of a mirthless grin flit across his face. “Bled so much the first day I couldn’t see. I got lucky.”

What a fool. They’re standing in a winter rain on the edge of their kingdom; she’s exhausted from lying to every single person she’s seen for half a year and he’s got a scar that nearly took his eye and looks like a ghost of himself. Peter won’t talk to her and Lucy can’t look at her and everyone thinks Edmund is a traitor. _Again_. They’re not _lucky_. They’re hanging on by a thread at most.

“Susan?” Eyes open now, he puts his own ice-cold hand over hers and pulls it down tight against his chest, pulling her close and wrapping his other arm around her. There’s never even a thought of resistance, despite how strong she’d planned to be, despite the guards rebuilding the settlement not a mile away, all expecting her to return smelling of nothing but herself and the rain. He’s been gone so long, and she’s been alone, running every night through all the disastrous ways this could end. To have him here and mostly whole and still so entirely _Edmund_ is too much.

He smells of sweat and blood and wet shale, but beneath all that he’s still Edmund. This meeting, hard as it is, smoothes her edges, sends the prowling darkness to rest. He seems to feel the same, because he clutches her close, muttering into her hair, “We’re so close now. This is it, Susan.”

She frees one hand and pulls back just enough to push her soaked hair back from her forehead and meet his eyes. Pale and set, yes, but there’s a clear determination that he only gets when he goes in for the kill, when he has the right clause for a treaty or has backed an ambassador into a corner or knows he can execute the perfect killing stroke. Even like this, exhausted and exiled and branded a traitor, he still looks like a predator that’s finally run down its prey.

Something untwists itself deep beneath her skin, and her own dark beast shifts happily.

She is an archer, after all. She’s always enjoyed the hunt.

* * *

Edmund’s plan is, once again, bloody awful.

She lets herself obsess over this fact the night before they depart the Western Wilds for Cair Paravel; she thinks she deserves it, between how damned horrible her last half year has been, and the damned cold, and having to keep this charade up for another fortnight. She huddles up and settles deep into her blankets, turning the thoughts over like smooth river stones in her mind.

She’s managed to leave a good portion of her initial contingent at their camp in the foothills; ostensibly, they’ll help rebuild the settlement and reinforce the Moors Post. They’re also, however, under the command of an incredibly curious but thankfully loyal Faun, who’s been instructed to wait for the appearance of a Wolf with the Queen’s signet who has her authority to command both the remaining Queen’s Guard and the soldiers stationed at Moors Post. She’s surely said more ridiculous-sounding things in her life than _wait for the Wolf with my Ring_ , but she cannot, at the moment, think of any.

It’s all Edmund’s fault in any case.

And Edmund. Lion. He’ll travel several days behind them, taking the summer trails that are treacherous this time of year. He’ll keep fairly good pace- he’ll be alone and traveling light- but he’ll still be slowed by the need for secrecy, and the necessity of Susan arriving home before he does.

It’s all either very poetic or very idiotic, depending on how you think about it, and Susan knows which side she comes down on. Northern Gale, Edmund had told her, had not taken to his defection particularly quickly, but he’s like Susan, and if she could convincingly lie to the people she loves the most, the people who know her best in all the world, he can certainly convince a bunch of fanatical guerillas desperate to believe the worst of the Pevensies of what half of Narnia already seemed to subconsciously fear.

He wouldn’t tell her what lies he told them, or what acts he performed or indignities he suffered to gain their trust (and she doubts he ever will, though he’ll surely perform endless penance for them), but it worked. And when you have a traitor, you use him.

There were so many ways this plan could have gone wrong, from Edmund’s outright murder at the hands of Northern Gale to their sudden enlightenment and use of him as a hostage. He- _they_ have taken a calculated risk, and it's paid off. Because Edmund? Edmund is being sent to kill his brother.

It’s foolish beyond belief, and incredibly risky for Northern Gale, but there’s a certain horrible poetry to it, if you’re inclined to believe in those things, and from experience she can say that every fanatic, rebel, and monster alive thinks himself a player in a grand drama. Things must be poetic, because destiny is like that.

And, well. If Susan’s enemies want to make fools out of themselves for poetic effect, she’ll hardly stop them.

There’s a part of her that can’t believe it even now, though in the darkness she can almost see the mix of amusement and devastation in Edmund’s eyes when he’d told her. It seems an idiotic plan because it is, but that’s where the poetry comes in ( _You don’t understand, Susan, to them it’s like… like a prophecy, or destiny. They don’t care much if I kill Peter or he kills me, but either way our house destroys itself and the natural order is restored. It’s circular, see_?).

She’s not an idiot. Of course she sees. They must see how weak her family is, how vulnerable now that Edmund has betrayed them. They are a house ready to splinter, unable to take a single blow more. They make an attractive target.

This is, after all, what she and Edmund had calculated on. Weaken the prey, create a tempting enough target, and eventually even the most cautious of predators will strike.

Lion knows they’re weak now.

She curls tighter in on herself beneath the blankets, trying not to imagine how much warmer it would be if Lucy were here, or how cold Edmund must be, watching the night pass and the snow fall on his own. Her thoughts are streaking through her head, and she knows there’s not a hope she’ll sleep, but she still lays there all the same, staring into the darkness.

* * *

She’s back, and Peter still won’t talk to her and Lucy keeps sending her horribly _kind_ glances and the snow is falling thick and wet and unseasonably late in the winter over the palace, but Susan can’t be bothered with these details, because she knows it’s almost over.

Edmund is almost here; he’s like a burning brand in the corner of her vision, and she sometimes imagines she can head the pounding of his horse’s hooves over the frozen ground.

Their trap is set, the bait prepared.

All that’s left is the waiting, the moment when Northern Gale oversteps and they can cut off its head while also destroying its body.

Peter won’t talk to her, but he’ll be alive.

The thing living under Susan’s skin howls, and she walks a little straighter through the snow-bright corridors.

* * *

Exactly a fortnight after she ( _they_ ) leave the Wilds, they spring the trap.

* * *

_The traitor has been caught_.

It runs like wildfire through Cair Paravel, from kitchens to barracks to the scholars in the library; all anyone can talk about is how Edmund, once a king, was captured attempting to come into the palace through the seagate.

Where there has been uncertainty and exhaustion for months and months and months, now there is only calm and a feeling something like revelation. When Moren brings her word of Edmund’s apprehension, his voice low and eyes strangely troubled, she rises from the desk where she’s been trying- or pretending to try- to decipher old maps, and her mind is clear.

“Peter is sitting in audience.” Moren nods, but looks troubled. “He’ll be taken there, I presume.”

“That was General Clius’ decision, Majesty,” he replies, looking away. He’s uncomfortable with the idea; why put a traitor in the vicinity of his target? Why risk any of this at all, when he could more easily be taken to the tower, or held in the barracks, far, far away from the brother he’s trying to kill?

But Susan knows. They need a spectacle, don’t they? They need Edmund to kill his brother (or be killed) in full view of the court and the world, and therein lies the trap. “All will be well, Moren.”

“Majesty, you should not-“

“I need you to trust me, Moren.” He has been loyal all these months, though she knows it has been hard, isolating for him as well as herself. Theirs has been a relationship of mutual respect: she doesn’t cause trouble, and he does not intrude in her affairs. He has kept his side of the bargain, though she gave no reassurances. She wishes she could reward that with something better than her word, but it will have to do for now. “All will be well.”

* * *

The corridors are flooded with cold, clear light; the snow has stopped overnight and now the sun and the blue sky are almost blinding, even glimpsed occasionally as they are through the windows.

Everyone- courtier, soldier, servant- whom she passes on her journey to the throne room looks askance, their eyes troubled, or angry, or pitying (for her, she supposes; for the girl whose younger brother is twice a traitor). The calm, dangerous thing that has filled her skin stands taller, and at her side Moren straightens, too, lips pulled back to bare his teeth at any who dares come too close as they pass by.

Slipping through the side door and onto the dais is freeing; as she settles onto her throne the edge settles into her bones, not cutting her but plating them like armor. She is calm like the motionless sea, like the snow at night. _All will be well_.

Peter is here, too, but he has none of her calm: the blood has drained completely from his face, which is screwed up in pain. His eyes are desperately trained on the far doors, ignoring the guards that have filled the hall on Susan’s orders. She feels a brief pang, watching him, knowing she’s caused part of his pain, but it’ll be over soon.

The side door slams again, achingly loud in the unnaturally silent hall, and Lucy is here, panting, dressed in riding leathers, her hair wind-blown and damp from snow. She doesn’t take her throne but continues to Peter, need in her eyes.

“Peter, please, not here. Don’t drag this out in the open.”

Susan would normally agree with her, is the thing. If Edmund truly were a traitor, she’d cover up these proceedings; hide them from the light of day. No one needs to see their family shatter. Except this- this is part of the ruse.

“Lucy.” She pitches her voice to carry, but keeps it flat. When Lucy meets her eyes she is angry, desperate, trying to hold her crumbling family together by sheer strength of will, and Susan understands. She _does_. But she can’t comfort her sister now. This is not her role. “It’s better this way.”

Lucy turns back to Peter, imploring, but he is stone, his eyes trained on the far doors, and, caught between the implacability of her siblings, Lucy subsides, grief warring with anger in her bright eyes. She doesn’t go to her own throne, though, falling into a restless stance next to Peter’s, hand still on his shoulder like an anchor.

And this is how they wait in their too-bright hall, their once-famed unity breaking into pieces and shattering more with every minute.

And so the bait is set.

* * *

She sees him slip Edmund the knife only because, since her younger brother was forced, staggering, into the hall, she’s been unable to take her eyes off him. She doesn’t look at his face longer than it takes to establish that he’s still with her: she knows what six months in exile has done to him and doesn’t need to cloud her mind with considerations of which of their guards split his lip, or gave him the bruise she can see darkening over his left cheekbone. Her mind catalogues the new limp, the way he is careful of his ribs, and knows these will be things to address, but not now.

Now what matters is the traitor before her, crowding up close behind her brother, one rough hand on the back of his neck. Clius is strong, tall for a Faun, deeply trusted. Trusted enough to bring the traitor king before his family, to order troop movements in the Wilds, to undermine what they’ve so carefully built. His face, even now, is stern, commanding. She’s trained under him, briefly: he is wicked with an axe, the ablest of the upper ranks in actual combat. She’d hate to fight him fairly.

Not that she’s going to bother with _fair_ in all of this.

She has no time to watch her family, but she can imagine the despair on Lucy’s face, the lost expression Peter is wearing. She has eyes only for the tableau before her: Edmund, knife in hand, bonds loosed by the traitor who’s set him up to kill his brother.

Susan shifts, letting her own blade slip down her sleeve and into her hand; she’d forced Edmund to teach her knifework, once upon a time. She’s better with the bow, but she’s passable with a knife, and passable is all she requires today. She breathes, long and deep and slow, willing herself to feel the calm of the bow, the fluid motion of its drawing and firing.

All eyes are on Edmund so none are on her, save for Edmund’s own; _he_ sees the twitch in her hand, almost hidden by her loose sleeves, and _he_ sees the way she gathers herself, tension coiling in her shoulders. He blinks once, twice, eyes dark, and then moves.

Things happen very, very slowly.

Edmund jerks forward, hard, freeing himself easily from Clius’ loose hold. He has a short dagger in one hand, rope trailing from his other wrist.

Clius himself staggers back as if in shock, but his short axe is already loosed from its clip, a deadly blur of silver in his hands.

Peter has risen from his throne, Lucy clutching his arm to keep him from running into the fray himself. Susan, too, rises, one long, smooth motion, her arm coiled back, waiting.

They’re too close, too damned close; Clius is the best, and though Edmund has always been very good, he’s weakened now, and fighting with what Susan suspects is a dulled dagger, and there’s no way to win this fairly.

And then Edmund slams a knee into the General’s flank, using the momentary advantage to pull back from such close quarters, getting in Clius’ blindspot. As the Faun moves to intercept, Susan strikes.

She’s not the best with thrown daggers, but she’s always been passable.

* * *

The hall is silent, motionless, for one brief moment, everyone shocked into a silent tableau. Edmund is behind Clius, dagger to his throat with his other arm wrapped around the General’s chest, restraining him as best he can. The guards paused, confused as to whom their enemy is now, weapons half raised at best. Peter and Lucy’s eyes have fallen on her, some curious blend of betrayal, surprise, and desperate hope on their faces.

Clius, for his part, is trapped against Edmund, axe fallen to the ground, staring in disbelief between Susan and the dagger she’d just buried in his shoulder.

And Susan, well, Susan stands alone, unruffled, unafraid. There’s a cry like a wolf or the crash of waves in her blood and she stands tall as ever, watching the blood of the traitor who tried to destroy her family drip onto the floors of her home.

* * *

“Seize him!” Clius struggles in Edmund’ grip, his words cast out to the soldiers who trust him.

“Enough.” Susan overrides Clius’ order with a strength of calm she has never possessed before. Striding down from the dais, she passes between stunned guards, parting them like wheat as she pulls a second knife from her skirts. “It’s over.”

At her nod, Edmund steps away from Clius and towards her, leaving the Faun alone in the hall’s center. Clius looks at her, gaze wild, jerking his head in a short denial.

“Your Majesty, I…”

“General Clius.” Edmund’s voice is strong when he interrupts; still raspy, still unused, but firm as it ever was. From the corner of her eye, she sees Peter mouthing soundlessly, something like devastating hope in his eyes. “You are charged with high treason, with the attempted assassinations of your kings, with fraternization with the rebel group Northern Gale, with the planning and-“

“Edmund.”

Edmund pauses, swallows visibly, his eyes darting to Peter and then away. His hands tremble and Susan reaches out to take one of his in her own.

“Edmund, what is this.”

He won’t look at Peter. She clutches his hand tighter. When he begins again, his voice is strong. “I, King Edmund the Just of Narnia, do hereby name you traitor, criminal, and condemned. How do you answer these charges?”

Clius’s breath is coming is short, irregular bursts, his face pale. If it were only Edmund, as he’d planned, there would be no danger, but whatever he sees on Susan’s face has sobered him. “There must be a trial. I demand it, as my right.”

Edmund barks a short, surprised laugh, which echoes eerily in the silent hall. “No, I think not.”

“You do not command me, usurper,” he snarls back, teeth bared. “I owe you nothing.”

A child, Susan remembers, and a wife, lost to the Winter. A life in service to Narnia, praying to Aslan, and Clius still lost everything. She could pity him, if she were kind like Lucy, or good like Peter, but he has tried to take her family in mistaken recompense for his own and so Clius, like all of his ilk, will have no mercy from her.

“No.” Every eye in the room turns to her, but she is finished with them now, finished with this whole charade. “There will be no trial. Your compatriots in Northern Gale are, as we speak, being routed by my troops. The footsoldiers will be imprisoned, the leaders executed.” She steps forward, eyes trained on her former general’s, and her words are ice, a stone table, a wolf’s howl. “You will be imprisoned, and when the facts of the matter have been explained to the council’s satisfaction, you will be executed.”

She pauses, blood singing in her ears, dark and lovely and deep. She looks at Edmund, thin and bruised and bloodied, and at Peter, whose face is bone white, and Lucy, who is not even trying to hide her tears. Her family, safe once more, but so deeply hurt. “You will be executed,” she repeats, enunciating every word, “and then _we will forget your name_.”

She jerks a nod, and from the back of the silent, disbelieving hall, Moren prowls forward, two others of her Guard at his back. With the eyes of the entire hall upon her, she gives the order. “Take him.”

Not a single voice raises a protest. Edmund’s hand is comforting against hers.

Whatever lives in her blood now curls up in satisfaction.

It’s over.

* * *

Edmund finds her hours later, after he’s been seen by physicians and hovered over by Danae and stolen away by Peter and Lucy. She doesn’t want to imagine those conversations; she knows her turn will come, but she’d like to avoid it for as long as possible. Edmund is committed, but sorry that their ruse was necessary, and will have said as much.

She, on the other hand, won’t have the answers they want, because she doesn’t regret what they did, what _she_ did.

Susan refuses to apologize for anything.

He comes to stand beside her on his terrace and then, because he is Edmund and lives to complicate her life, he hops up on the railing, swinging both legs over and staring out to the sea. Her heartbeat speeds up and she bites back the words she wants to say; Lion knows, he’d survive six months with traitors and then die of a fall off his own balcony. He kicks his feet a bit, looking ten years younger, and the tension slowly bleeds out of her.

They stay like that for a while, neither moving nor speaking, just watching the sky slowly change to a paler blue, colors from the sunset creeping into the east. The sea is glorious under the cold sky and the quiet calms her, soothes her restlessness. It amuses her that he knew to find her here, but then he must have guessed how much he was missed, for a whole variety of reasons. He’s always known her best, even when they were children and he barely knew himself.

“I think you frighten him sometimes.” Tone light, eyes still locked on the water, he says the words with ease and takes one of her hands in his own as he does so. His callouses are harsher now, hands bone-thin now that she has the time to actually concentrate on them. His presence, though is the same, and reassuring as ever.

Some part of her mind murmurs assent; she glances at Edmund and then away, trying to gauge him. “Yes, I think I might. But not you.”

He laughs, and despite the edge to it there is a hint of gentleness, too. “I _am_ you, Susan. Only not quite so brave, I think.”

She fixes her gaze on him now, watching him watch the sea. He’s right, in a way. They’ve always been similar; quieter, angrier, more driven to have their own way. That’s been ripped out of Edmund; he’s taken that darkness in himself and made it into penance.

Susan has taken hers and shaped it into something sharp, something with teeth. It’s not her fault if no one but Edmund has really noticed it until now.

“I’m not kind like Lucy, or good like Peter, and Lion knows I don’t have your sense of justice.” Edmund had, initially, considered clemency for Clius, and for all the traitors before Susan shut that suggestion down with extreme prejudice. “I’m selfish, Edmund. I don’t know how to be anything other than that.”

She believes in her brothers and her sister and herself, and not much else besides. This family, this throne, this country; they are hers now, and she never quite knows if she’s the wolf circling in the night or the thing that keeps the wolf away, but it hardly matters. The end result is the same.

“You’re not supposed to be any of those things, sister.” His voice is softer now, falling with the coming night, and though his eyes are still on the water his hand is strong around hers. She eyes his profile in the gathering gloom and wonders what Peter said to him, if they fought. Edmund’s part was always going to be easier to bear for Peter, because of the risks he took and because the lies he told were only ever to their enemies.

Susan is less predictable.

“What am I supposed to be, then?”

He does turn to look at her then, slipping off the railing and moving to stand beside her. In the paling light of falling night his bruises and scars are softened, smoothed away. “You’re a queen, Susan.” He gives her a brief smile, letting it flit across his face before turning back to the water. “So be a queen.”

Susan watches Edmund watch darkness fall upon the sea. It’s cold still, the waves frigid under the night sky, but calm, too, and she feels the dark thing beneath her skin settle, wrapping itself around her bones, sharp edges and all. Winter nights and frozen stone and watching wolves; these are the things that make her what she is.

So that’s what she’ll be.

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to edenfalling, who put up with me completely scrapping four separate drafts and still gave me invaluable comments. 
> 
> Original prompt: I LOVE Su and Ed. Give me spymaster adventures in Narnia, the two of them helping one another readjust to England, adventures in Carlomen, something exploring their connection as the skeptic and the traitor, whatever. I totally ship it, but obviously a purely sibling connection is great too. I'll love anything with these two.


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